The present invention relates to an emergency dispatching system, and, more particularly, to a system which can reliably notify a monitoring person, such as a relative or a caretaker, of the occurrence of an unusual event when the unusual event has occurred on a person who lives alone, such as an elderly person, a sick person, a person who takes up a job, leaving a family behind, or a single woman.
Recently, elderly people who live alone are increasing due to the progress of the aging society and nuclear families, and relatives should regularly phone or visit them to check the safety of the elderly people. Even in case of living with elderly people, particularly, sick elderly people and demential elderly people, caretakers should normally attend them, and even when the caretakers go out for a short period of time, they should call outside to regularly check the safety.
With regard to persons who take up jobs, leaving their families behind or single persons, not as urgent as elderly people though, actually relatives would worry about their safety and regularly phone them or repeatedly visit them.
Dangers that may occur on those persons who live alone include an internal type (self-brought type) (hereinafter called xe2x80x9cinternal dangerxe2x80x9d), such as a spasm of sickness, heavy bone fracture caused by falling or falling down unconscious in addition to an external type (hereinafter called xe2x80x9cexternal dangerxe2x80x9d), such as a gas leakage or fire in a house or break-in of a burglar.
There are various home security systems to protect persons who live alone against dangers. While the specific contents of those systems range widely, they are fundamentally designed to detect the occurrence of the dangers that face a monitored person by various sensors (burglar sensor, smoke sensor, temperature sensor, gas leak sensor, etc.) and notify a predetermined security company or the like.
The introduction of those security systems can certainly relieve relatives of some burden of regularly phone calls or visits.
However, the conventional security systems are designed in such a way that when various sensors detect the occurrence of an emergency, large-scale measures are taken, such as immediate activation of a sprinkler or dispatching of a person in charge from a security company, so that a relatively high contract fee should be paid.
Further, the sensors always face a possibility of malfunction, so that false reporting besides the activation of a sprinkler or dispatching of a person from a security company would make mental and economical burdens of a monitored person and relatives or the like unbearable.
Furthermore, although the conventional security systems are relatively good at detecting an external danger, they hardly cope with the detection of an internal danger but can merely recognize the depression of a report button by a monitored person himself at best. Therefore, there arise such a problem that even when a monitored person falls into a condition where it is difficult to even depress the report button, an effective aiding measure cannot be taken against it immediately.
The invention has been devised to overcome the problems of the conventional systems and aims at realizing an emergency dispatching system which is designed to be able to reduce the occurrence of false reports as much as possible and reliably send the first report to relatives or the like in an emergency, and to automatically detect even the occurrence of an internal danger.
To achieve the object, an emergency dispatching system according to the invention comprises a communication device on a monitored person side which is connectable to a communication line; at least one sensor for sensing a vital reaction of a monitored person or an external danger thereof; contact address storage means where at least one telephone number to contact in case of emergency is stored; message storage means where at least one message to be sent in case of emergency is stored; safety judging means for judging a safety of the monitored person based on an output of the sensor; dispatch notifying means for warning the monitored person of an emergency when it is assumed by the safety judging means that the emergency has occurred; automatic dialing means for generating a dialing signal corresponding to a telephone number of the contact address and outputting the dialing signal to the communication device on the monitored person side, thereby establishing a call to a communication device at the contact address, in case where a safety confirmation input is not detected within a certain time since warning made by the dispatch notifying means; and message dispatching means for sending an emergency message stored in the message storage means to the communication device at the contact address via the communication device on the monitored person side after establishment of a communication line between the communication device on the monitored person side and the communication device at the contact address. The xe2x80x9ctelephone numberxe2x80x9d includes the number of a pager.
The xe2x80x9cvital reactionxe2x80x9d means an event which indicates that a monitored person is living a normal life, and the present system indirectly recognize the safety of the monitored person by detecting whether or not there is the vital reaction of the monitored person, such as xe2x80x9cwashing a facexe2x80x9d, xe2x80x9cpassing through a corridorxe2x80x9d, xe2x80x9cboiling waterxe2x80x9d, xe2x80x9cusing a toiletxe2x80x9d or xe2x80x9ctaking a bathxe2x80x9d.
Therefore, the internal danger of the monitored person can also be automatically detected.
When the monitored person himself or a caretaker performs an input operation for safety confirmation after warning made by the dispatch notifying means, emergency reporting to the communication device at the contact address will not be made naturally.
That is, the emergency dispatching system is designed in such a way that even when the safety judging means has assumed the occurrence of an emergency based on the outputs of individual sensors, emergency reporting is not made immediately to the contact address, but the monitored person is warned and emergency dispatching is done unless an input on safety confirmation by the monitored person is detected. It is therefore possible to prevent false reports.
After the safety judging means decides that xe2x80x9can emergency has occurredxe2x80x9d, dialing is automatically made to a communication device registered as a contact address, so that a relative can reliably receive the first report once the number of the portable telephone or the like of the relative is registered as the contact address.
In other words, as long as a report is not made, the safety of the monitored person can be assumed, making it unnecessary to make regular telephone calls to check the safety, like the past.
As the first report on the occurrence of an emergency is reliably dispatched to a relative or the like, this creates a room for self-helping protection and helping activities provided mainly by the relative or the like, making it possible to minimize the use of an external institute that demands a relatively high cost.
As the communication device on the monitored person side, a radio telephone (a mobile communication terminal) such as a portable telephone, PHS, may be used. In this case, the contact address storage means, the message storage means, the safety judging means, the dispatch notifying means, the automatic dialing means and the message dispatching means have only to be retained in a charger of the radio telephone, and the sensor has only to be connected to the safety judging means by a cable or wirelessly.
It is desirable to have such a structure that charging state detecting means for detecting whether or not the radio telephone is set in the charger is provided, and the safety monitoring operation of the safety judging means starts at the same time the radio telephone is set in the charger, and the safety monitoring operation is temporarily canceled at the same time the radio telephone is detached from the charger.
As a result, a monitored person can use this emergency dispatching system through ordinary actions of carrying out a portable telephone when going out and setting it in the charger after coming home, and a psychological oppression of being monitored is not imparted on the monitored person.
In this case, in case of forgetting carrying out a portable telephone, it is desirable to provide call detecting means for detecting a ring-back tone or ringing vibration when a call is made to the radio telephone, and to take such a structure that the safety monitoring operation of the safety judging means is temporarily canceled in case where the ring-back tone or ringing vibration of the radio telephone continues for a predetermined time or longer.
Another emergency dispatching system according to the invention has a radio telephone on a monitored person side which is connectable to a communication line, and at least one sensor for sensing a vital reaction of a monitored person or an external danger thereof, and is characterized in that provided on the radio telephone side are contact address storage means where at least one telephone number to contact in case of emergency is stored, message storage means where at least one message to be sent in case of emergency is stored; safety judging means for judging a safety of the monitored person based on an output of the sensor, dispatch notifying means for warning the monitored person of an emergency when it is assumed by the safety judging means that the emergency has occurred, automatic dialing means for generating a dialing signal corresponding to a telephone number of the contact address, thereby making a call, in case where a safety confirmation input is not detected within a certain time since warning made by the dispatch notifying means, and message dispatching means for sending an emergency message stored in the message storage means to the communication device at the contact address after establishment of a communication line with the communication device at the contact address, and that the sensor is connected to the safety judging means by a cable or wirelessly.
As the essential structural elements of the emergency dispatching system are retained in the radio telephone such as a portable telephone, it is possible to detects a danger at the time of going out and ensure emergency dispatch.
In this case, it is desirable to equip the radio telephone with present-position information outputting means for identifying a present position of the radio telephone and outputting present position information, and dispatch present position information from the present-position information outputting means to the communication device at the contact address at the time of the emergency dispatching by the message dispatching means. The xe2x80x9cpresent-position information outputting meansxe2x80x9d mentioned here corresponds to, for example, a GPS receiver.
As a result, a danger can be detected at the time of going out and at the same time a monitoring person at the contact address can identify the rough present position of the monitored person, thus ensuring prompt aiding activities.
It is desirable to equip the emergency dispatching system with temporal condition storage means in which a valid time zone for judging the safety based on the output result from each sensor is set beforehand. In this case, the safety judging means can assume the occurrence of an emergency when an output indicating the vital reaction of the monitored person is not acquired from the sensor during the valid time zone.
A safe interval in the valid time zone can be set in the temporal condition storage means. In this case, the safety judging means can assume the occurrence of an emergency in case where an output indicating a vital reaction of the monitored person is not obtained from the sensors at all during the safe interval.
The structure may be designed in such a way that a plurality of messages associated with outputs of individual sensors are stored in the message storage means in advance, and a message corresponding to that sensor output which has become a basis for judgment of the occurrence of an emergency by the safety judging means is dispatched to the communication device at the contact address via the message dispatching means.
It is desirable that each emergency dispatching system mentioned above should be designed in such a way as to further comprise caller-number identifying means for identifying a telephone number of a caller when a call is made to the communication device on the monitored person side, and emergency-dispatch requesting right holder storage means where a telephone number of a person who has been authorized beforehand as an emergency-dispatch requesting right holder is stored, and that the safety judging means judges whether or not the caller is the emergency-dispatch requesting right holder by comparing the telephone number stored in the emergency-dispatch requesting right holder storage means with a telephone number output from the caller-number identifying means, it is assumed that an emergency has occurred and the monitored person is warned of that emergency via the dispatch notifying means when the caller is the emergency-dispatch requesting right holder and calling from the caller matches with a preset pattern, and the message dispatching means dispatches an emergency message to the communication device at the contact address when the safety confirmation input is not detected within a certain time since warning made by the dispatch notifying means.
As a result, when there is objectively a high probability of the monitored person being in danger, emergency dispatch can be made based on the intention of a pre-authorized third person.
In Japan, the long-term care insurance system has started since April of 2000, and payment for services provided by the long-term care insurance is based on in-home nursing care.
It can be expected that the emergency dispatching system according to the invention becomes an information infrastructure which contributes to the stability of the basis of in-home nursing care services, such as the capability of coping with not only an emergency state of a person who receives in-home nursing care but also a situation where, for example, a caretaker and a person who receives nursing care cannot move (strained back or the like of the caretaker), and the capability of adequately dispatching a traveling service vehicle in such a case.
Further, the properness, effectiveness and efficiency of the contents and time allotting of nursing care services can be expected, resulting in the possible outlook of both xe2x80x9csufficient payment of long-term care insurancexe2x80x9d and xe2x80x9cproperness and reduction of the long-term care insurance feexe2x80x9d.